Muscovites Face Sugar Rationing

April 13, 1989|The Washington Post

MOSCOW -- Moscow, the showpiece city of the Soviet Union, has now suffered the ultimate indignity. For the first time since the worst days of World War II, residents will soon be able to buy sugar only with ration coupons.

The sugar crisis is the talk of the city, and the latest bit of gallows humor going around town is the suggestion that the troubled Soviet space program change its motto to ``Let`s Go to Mars for Sugar!``

``And now that it seems our (unmanned Mars moon probe) is lost, and we`re not going to Mars. We may never get sugar,`` said one angry shopper outside a grocery store on Wednesday.

City workers will begin distributing ration coupons on May 1, the holiday celebrating the triumphs of socialism.

Moscow residents will be able to buy four pounds of sugar each in May and six pounds each in June and July.

While that may sound like a lot, this is the season when Muscovites begin buying large amounts of fruit to make jams and preserves for the long and fruitless winter, and sugar will be in tremendous demand.

The decision to begin sugar rationing is only one of many draconian measures already under way in the provinces and other large cities to deal with the worsening food crisis.

The rest of the country has long been short of candy, meat, shoes, sneakers, toothpaste, toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent, coffee and tea. But for the citizens of Moscow, the sugar decree is bitter medicine.

To the Western eye, Moscow`s grocery stores are a pathetic sight. A stack of brown root vegetables and yellowish cabbages, some fatally bruised tomatoes, ``meat`` that is really an artless arrangement of gristle and fat.

Yet every day, at least 2 million people ride into the city with empty shopping bags hoping to fill them with whatever they can. Moscow, to their injured sense of proportion, is an endless mall of plenty.